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Mario Susko

The Variables of Progression

I’ve slept through my death, but I sawyou, with my own eyes, kneel at the bottomof the stairs, your index and middle fingerfeeling my artery, your head, framedby the light, shaking, a slow motion pendulum -

Was there enough time left for meto wake up and leave the room,so I could be found at that spot -yet, what purpose would that serveif I had only imagined you to proveto myself I had dreamed of being asleep,and would that mean that going back to lookat myself there I’d been alive nevertheless -

I could not say at the end, remindednot once that I would, at first, rememberonly what I did not remember, that the dreamwas so life-like it had to step out of itself,and I would be free, whether I died in itor when I awoke, for the mortar shells,in either case, could not have been dummies,the latter death no doubt less memorable -

Still, one day I may sit at a sidewalk cafe,deserted in late afternoon, watching myselfmarch by, one in the column of childrenwhose heads are shaved, bare feet coveredin mud, wooden rifles on our shoulders,our drill learned by heart: Bang, lie down,you’re dead, and finally perceive I had no dreamand, having been conceived by you, no life -